Monday, February 6, 2017

The hologram of Mélenchon : and there arises a ghost… – Obs

We can make multiple readings of the small event of the presidential campaign, presented as a “first in History”. The first read is to see a good shot of communication. We talked a lot about this meeting before, it has been widely commented on during (trending topic on Twitter) and described after. Clearly, the present were impressed by the technical performance, and the images are indeed quite striking.

The second reading falls within the symbolic, and here, there are clearly a conflict of interpretations. On the side of the team Mélenchon, the symbolic is ambitious. Sophia Chikirou, director of communications at the candidate of the left Front formulated it in these terms : "It is a tool of com, but set in the service of a discourse on scientific progress, very present in our program. The hologram is a symbol to remind people that science brings us together. “

Cult of personality ?

Eric Coquerel, political coordinator of the left Party, went further still : "we object to the obscurantism of the FN, we rely on the Lights, we have confidence in the ingenuity of this people. The hologram is a way to symbolize this." But everyone does not have this reading. Le Parisien reported last week that some communist militants read something else : “On the symbolic, it bothers a little. The cult of personality, this isn’t too much our thing. “

from this point Of view, one can understand their concern. Already this campaign just to uncover people around Jean-Luc Mélenchon – or even behind him – then if he is gifted with ubiquity… It is also true that there have been a few previous to a political campaign of this technique (not direct, as was the case yesterday, it is true, but still) and you can’t say that this is the double winner of the democracy : Erdogan in Turkey, Modi, the Prime minister of India… Nevertheless, see in this technique the ferment of a cult of personality, it is without doubt exaggerated.

bring back the dead

Because the symbolic the most striking is perhaps elsewhere. This technique, which until now, has mostly been used to bring back the dead. So, it shows Marilyn Monroe, Tupac, or at this point in the show "Hit Parade" Claude François, Mike Brant, or Dalida. You may laugh, but it also says something of the deep symbolic of this technique. Even in his great modernity, it has to do with the past, with the disappearance, with the ghosts.

This is confirmed by a reading strictly technical of this event that was a hologram of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Because, strictly speaking, it was not a hologram (which would have required another technique, a considerable amount of energy, and that would have provided Jean-Luc Mélenchon a 3D image that could be seen from all angles).

The Jean-Luc Mélenchon present in Aubervilliers was an image projected in 2D, an optical illusion which is in fact a very old one, known as the "ghost Pepper", a game of mirrors which has long been used in the theatre or in the fairground attractions to give the illusion of presence spectral.

A process described in the Sixteenth century

however, the first description of this type of optical illusion dates back even further, to the Sixteenth century and to the writings of a character very wonder of the Italian Renaissance, Giambattista Della Porta. Della Porta was interested in many things, but especially what was strange, what appeared to be inexplicable, the magical. Della Porta belonged to that time where you could be both the end of science and versed in the esoteric (which earned him also some trouble with the Inquisition).

Why am I telling you this ? Because I wonder if that is the real symbolism of this meeting is not there, in this way if a particular Jean-Luc Mélenchon has to live in the time. His achievement was less to be at the same time in Lyon and Aubervilliers, that to be both perfectly present and the ghostly appearance of another time.

I wonder if, very deeply, this is not the seductive and disorder in him, this way of being of now and before (in its rhetoric, its references, its policy options). And yesterday, this pseudo-hologram said it perfectly : technical prowess and scientific of updating of old processes that are described by an esoteric of the Sixteenth century, it gave, no doubt unwittingly, a representation quite interesting, what is the mélenchonisme.